Is Your Company Ready to Meet Its New Disability Hiring Quota?

Has the economy got you worried about reelection? Looking for clever ways to showcase your bona fides as a promoter of “fairness,” champion of the little guy, and scourge of big business? Want to fill the front pages with dumb pronouncements that distract voters from the real issues? Then don’t miss a chance to goad your opponents into taking a principled stand against intrusive government which your allies in the media can easily spin as being insensitive to the plight of the less fortunate.

The White House did such a boffo job firing up its base with its “heads I win, tails you lose” culture war initiative against the Catholic Church that it apparently decided to pick a new fight over the imposition of handicapped hiring quotas. Get ready for an onslaught of new regulations, litigation, intimidation, and selective enforcement, as the Obama administration works to transform the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits discrimination against the handicapped, into an affirmative action quota system.

Under changes proposed by Obama’s Labor Department, 7 percent of a company’s employees will soon have to qualify as disabled if the company hopes to continue doing business with the federal government. “What gets measured gets done,” Patricia Shiu, director of the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, told The Wall Street Journal. “And we’re in the business of getting things done.”

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